Lauren
by Hc-Svnt-Dracones
Summary: With everyone gone off to Safe Haven, Whiskey reads the stories that they left behind. Spoilers for E1, mentions of suicide.


**Disclaimer: Dollhouse does not belong to me. And I'm not making any money by writing this story. So please don't sue me.**

* * *

Whiskey had, once upon a time before she'd ever heard of Adelle DeWitt or Topher Brink or Boyd Langton or the Dollhouse, been a girl named Lauren.

Of course, Whiskey doesn't know that. But life gets boring and lonely with the house empty and the world destroyed, so some days she likes to sit and read the stories that were left behind. Lauren isn't even her favorite of the stories. It isn't dramatic like Priya or exciting like Thomas. It's not as sad as Madelyn or as horrible as Anthony. It's just a little story of a little girl… Lauren. _Lauren, Lauren, Lauren, my ladybug Lauren_. It pops into Whiskey's head in a sweet singsong voice that gives her déjà vu and goose bumps, but she doesn't know why or where it came from. And she he can't work out why the name feels right coming out of her mouth, why it seems lyrical when she knows they're just plain, utilitarian sounds. Loh _ren_.

But Whiskey reads about Lauren a lot, even though she has to skip over some of the big words like _depression_ and _suicidal_; even though something very quiet inside her insists that she's missing part of the story; even though she'd had to venture all the way up to Adelle's office to get the stories in their folders, once upon a time when her name had been Claire and the house had been full and Topher had been crazy_. _She can only remember him and the rest of them being there sometimes and even then only a little bit, as if it were obscured by fog. She thinks she remembers it a little better when she's reading, though. And that's a nice thought. Reading helps her to be her best.

Now—now that they're all gone and house is quiet and dark— she sits alone and reads about Lauren. She reads about the others a lot of days, but she's drawn to Lauren in a strange way that she can't understand, so she reads about her the most often. She thinks maybe she feels a little less broken when she's reading the transcript of the interview between Adelle and Lauren in which Adelle had asked Lauren what she hoped to get out of life and Lauren had cried and said she didn't know, that she'd never really been good at anything but knitting. It makes Whiskey very sad to read that, even though she knows there are sadder things in other stories in different folders. No one should feel like they can't be their best, she thinks. Sometimes Whiskey wonders where Lauren is now. She wonders if she's her best. She earnestly hopes that she is, because Whiskey feels a lot less lost and forgotten when she reads the little diary Lauren left behind, like she's a little bit closer to full and whole, and she thinks Lauren should get to feel that way, too. It's only fair.

They'd been trying to get Lauren for a while, it says, talking to her lots. Lauren had been writing a diary for some reason and it is in the file along with blood tests and drug tests and brain scans that Whiskey thinks she might have understood at some point in the empty, hazy past. The little diary is blue and it says Lauren's address on the inside. 240 North Hudson Avenue, Pasadena, California. It makes her feel safe and warm to see those words, but she doesn't know why. It's just as well, though, because the rest of the diary makes her sad, sad, sad and it's nice to have that warmth to turn back to. It makes her feel broken and whole at the same time, like she's remembering something that has never happened and _could_ never happen, but something that irrevocably _was_… a dream, maybe, or a nightmare. She reads what Lauren wrote about being afraid, about that DeWitt woman dropping by again, about sitting staring at her half-finished sweater and not starting the next row for hours and hours and hours because all she could think about was taking the empty needle in her left hand and plunging it into her temple. Whiskey hopes that Lauren didn't do it, but the diary stops abruptly on the next page; she'll never know the ending. Sometimes she thinks she's writing the ending, but the thought makes her scared, like there are spiders crawling up her legs, so she puts Lauren and the diary and the medical pages away and wanders up to the clothing warehouse or to the art corner to or to read through Caroline's story again, instead. Eventually somebody will come back, she reminds herself so that she'll feel less scared, and it's her job to wait for them, even if she can't remember who they'll be or what they'll want. Sometimes, when she's trying to fall asleep in the pods or on a sofa or in Topher's server room, she imagines she's waiting for Lauren. It's a comforting thought, she thinks as she drifts off, but she's not sure why.


End file.
